The Quack Shack

[WannaBeHillBilly]

It looks like the Mallards have left! - I am relieved on one hand (much less cracked corn consumption) and concerned for their safety on the other hand (there is duck-season somewhere). I just hope to see some of them again in 2023.

Now i have a vacant Mallard-shelter, just finished it with a wood-chip base:

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Also the duck-dock was finished yesterday and installed in the pond:

By the way, the white stuff in the last picture is not snow… guess…

 

[Miss Lydia]

Mama duck might use the Mallard lean to next spring! Glad to hear you got them up and safe last night hope V it goes good for tonight too.

 

[Muscovy Wunda]

Todays pondering thought, does egg colour effect how long eggs stay fresh? A lovely town neighbour gave me a bucket of eggs, they've been sitting on the bench for over a week. Decided to boil some for breakfast. The 2 white eggs floated but 4 brown ones did not and 2 brown ones stood up but didn't float. All collected about the same time. Interesting

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Todays pondering thought, does egg colour effect how long eggs stay fresh? A lovely town neighbour gave me a bucket of eggs, they've been sitting on the bench for over a week. Decided to boil some for breakfast. The 2 white eggs floated but 4 brown ones did not and 2 brown ones stood up but didn't float. All collected about the same time. Interesting

Not the egg color - but the humidity is a factor: The float method only determines how much water has evaporated from the egg, increasing the size of the air-reservoir, making the egg first stand, then float.
It works the other way around too: Let the eggs sit in clean water for a day and they will all come back together on the bottom of the container.
The float method is completely unreliable, especially here in the U.S.A where eggs must be refrigerated. Every time the fridge is opened, warm and moist air enters and water will condense on the cold surface of the eggs where it will be absorbed back, displacing air from the air-bubble.

 

[Magnolia Ducks]

I agree with hillbilly. If the eggs are not washed two weeks on the counter and 60+ days in the fridge. Just cause they float doesn't really mean anything. I use the crack one at a time in the coffee cup method. Sniff and if they smell fresh use them. If they don't smell perfect throw away, get fresh coffee cup and proceed. I do admit I don't use this on raw egg recipes. I made caeser salad last night and used fresh eggs rather than ones that were older. But for cooked, hard boild, scrambled baking etc. Coffee cup method. Been reading about waterglassing. Need to try it as all my neighbors are tired of eggs.

 

[Miss Lydia]

All my birds are tired of laying eggs. I got 1 chicken egg for the whole week.

Good Morning/Evening. Have a blessed Sunday!

 

[rjohns39]

Good morning / evening folks

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Merry Sunday everybody!​

Y'all enjoy the rest of your weekend! Enjoy the sun and the warm weather outdoors or enjoy the bad weather from the inside, sipping on a hot beverage.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Semi annual duck-house clean-out yesterday: It took me two full hours to remove the foot of bedding that had accumulated since spring. Hay is available for free to me, but has the bad habit of matting, which makes the removal of some layers really "sweaty"…
Had to remove most of the card-board boxes from the house, due to the poor state they were in, but the ducknagers had a blast yesterday with those, they were like cat-ducks:

The soiled bedding is piling up six feet high behind the duck-house, but will compact and de-compose really fast during the upcoming wet-season. Late afternoon i re-assembled the duck-house-furniture and distributed new bedding, so here's the mudd-room, the floor is covered with wood-chips that will clean muddy duck-feet while walking on them, thus keeping the rest of the house cleaner:

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This is the guard-duck post, notice the thick layer of bedding, elevating the guard ducks a couple of inches over the entrance, giving them, an advantage when defending the house:

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From here you enter the living room with its flat surface bedding, straw along the walls and hay in the center:

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The passage to the bedrooms is filled with dry leaves, again to clean up the duck's feet and legs:

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Next is the bedroom for the raunchy ducknagers, while cleaning this one out i found plenty of evidence of crazy parties happening in here in the past. Straw in the nest-boxes, hay in the center.

And finally, the puddle-duck's fortified bedroom. No other duck is allowed in here, with the exception of Limpy drake…

The larger puddle-ducks, Blanca and Erpelchen insist in having their hay-courtains in front of their sleeping boxes:

Until next spring's cleanup…